


skirts or shorts (or suits and ties)

by iCarly1969 (almostinfinite)



Category: One Piece
Genre: Cross-dressing?, Female Sanji - Freeform, Gen, biological sex vs gender identity, happy belated birthday sanji, it's okay he doesn't understand himself either, sanji doesn't understand him, surprisingly progressive vinsmokes, zeff is a softie at heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-07
Updated: 2020-03-07
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:40:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23051086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/almostinfinite/pseuds/iCarly1969
Summary: sanji chose his name the way reiju chose hers and the rest of their siblings kept theirs. it honestly never occurred to him that it mattered what his birth sex was. well, he did sort of realise that people treat guys differently from girls, but in his mind he didn't realise that most people stick with what they were born with and assume others to be the same.he definitely gave zeff quite a shock the day he woke up with bloody sheets and a persistent cramp.(at least zeff was zeff)
Relationships: Aka Ashi no Zeff | Red-Leg Zeff & Vinsmoke Sanji
Comments: 6
Kudos: 194





	skirts or shorts (or suits and ties)

**Author's Note:**

> happy birthday sanji! it's four days late but at least here it is.  
> warning for gender identity and biological sex issues, but it's not tense at all. i hope you enjoy it ~

The day Zeff discovered that Sanji was, biologically speaking, female, he finished a pack of cigarettes (and a bottle of brandy) in one sitting. Quietly, out on the boat they usually used for their supply runs, under the moon-lit sky, alone.

Just to clear his mind and think about some things, wonder _how_ , then to get his act together. Nothing had changed, not really, and even if he didn’t know the kid’s sex he knew Sanji as well as he ever really could. That kid was the most insecure one he had ever seen. He wasn’t about to start acting differently, at any rate. It might freak the kid out, and he’s not ready for flying knives again, it took him much too long to train that out of –

It occurred to Zeff that he might just have to encourage it as a habit. A back-up, at any rate, because at some point his kid might wear. Skirts. Or, well. Dresses.

Right?

It’s alright for him to go on his hands and kick the heads off idiots when he’s wearing pants, but. Zeff winced, thinking about the indecency, and then again when he thought about the suitors he’d eventually have to entertain.

… now that he thought about it, was the kid going to bring home a girl then?

He shook his head.

The thing was, this whole thing wasn’t really his fault.

It’s not like with a baby where he’d _know_ , if only because of the amount of diapers he’d have to change. This kid came to him semi-grown, loudly insisting that _his_ name is _Sanji_ , and Zeff obviously wouldn’t be making an effort to _check_.

It didn’t help that after their rescue, after he was awake and clear-headed, the doctor led with “your child” and he’d at once interrupted to clarify “that’s not my kid”. Then they were both promptly distracted by the fact that sometime while neither of them were paying attention, the kid who should have been so weak that walking ought to have been an issue had managed to sneak out of the bed and was raiding the pantry. And flinging knives at them when they startled him. If the doctor wasn’t quick enough to shove his makeshift wheelchair out of the way, it might have ended quite differently.

As it stood, Zeff would have been impressed if he wasn’t so – well, worried.

Not that anyone was telling the kid that.

When he was making an effort to relearn how to walk again, the kid adhered himself to his side, and when the kid was shivering from silent nightmares, he made sure to pat his back. The doctor gave him a knowing look once, and he glared at the other until he remembered that the two of them were still there on the other crew’s goodwill.

Then eventually they were cleared, and Zeff had some savings stashed away in the East he retrieved to pay them off. He hadn’t needed to, they were perfectly willing to let him go and keep the kid, and he wasn’t a good person, he knew that, but. He couldn’t bring himself to leave the kid behind. Even if he hadn’t realized they were looking at the kid to grow up for them, some instinct had told him to take the kid and get away. Then he spent years raising the kid, and now here they were, with the kid bleeding out between his legs and very calmly telling him that he might need proper padding to deal with that.

What was Zeff supposed to do?

He had a vague idea they were monthly issues, and that blood was involved that had to be staunched somehow, but then? Other than knowing he ought to keep Sanji out of the ocean and away from cold food for a while, he had absolutely no clue what to do. Honestly, he had a feeling that the kid had a better idea of what was going on and how to deal with it than he did, and he knew for a fact that there wasn’t anyone around to teach the kid so he must have learnt way earlier than when they met. Which was another issue he didn’t quite want to think too hard about, because he had seen the kid flinch sometimes, and he could all too clearly remember the first time he tried to teach the kid how to kick. It was a pretty good attempt so he had patted the kid on the head and praised him, then the kid burst out crying because it wasn’t perfect.

Alright, he was getting distracted. What was he thinking about?

Oh, periods. Right, the kid was also very good at pretending nothing hurt, but he knew the kid and he knew that he was not alright – something about cramps? About expected, Zeff reckoned, something must be hurt somewhere to be bleeding this frequently.

Still, it had been almost half a night, and he had no real plan beyond: go to shore, find a bookstore, and read up on this. Of course, he could ask around, but if the kid didn’t want to talk about it then there must have been a reason, and Zeff could look the other way but not many people could. He didn’t want to be spreading this knowledge around when the kid’s not clearly comfortable, and it’s nobody’s business at any rate.

He ground out another cigarette, eyed the open expanse of the seas.

He’ll have this figured out, he decided. He’d had plans to take the kid to get fitted for a suit, it shouldn’t be too much to ask the tailor to get him a dress too – discreetly, of course. Then he’d have to think hard about fighting in cumbersome clothing, and all those problems for another day.

~

Sanji chose to be _Sanji_ , the way Reiju chose to be _Reiju_.

Sick of his siblings telling him that as weak as he was, he should chose being a girl to get more of an edge than he’d have as a boy, he might have picked his name out of spite. But he stuck to it, and he had grown to love it. He’ll always know how to be a girl as well as he’d learnt how to be a boy, of course, all of them did.

It surprised him how most people didn’t.

No one around him was discriminate about fighting, or beating people up, on grounds of gender or age or _whatever_. It took his trip across the Red Line and his time on the Orbit to truly understand how what they’d learnt about – in theory only, since everyone he used to know knew better than to write someone off for something as stupid as _gender_ – could be applied. How people were softer on kids, how they’re kinder to ladies, how they’re so much more likely to casually hurt both kinds of people. Little things like that.

He never realised that Zeff needed to be told that his biological sex was female.

To be fair, he shouldn’t have assumed. Zeff had always called him ‘kid’ or – eggplant, even if he never liked answering to it. Neither betrayed any gender, and Zeff _did_ always tell him about chivalry and treating ladies like the gentleman he was… well, there _might_ have been signs.

Still, crouching in his room staring at the blood going drip drip drip down his thighs wasn’t fun, and he could clean up but he was also cramping in his tummy. All around he just didn’t feel good, and the fact was just that he _didn’t_ want to go out and try finding the things he’d need.

Not that he was entirely sure, either.

When they were being educated it was always more about how to use their gender to their advantage, things like seduction on top of things like ways to walk, talk, move, blend in, kill. As different types of the different genders – an aggressive lady, a shy young lad, an uncouth man, a serene girl; the list went on, and Sanji never listened too hard because he didn’t like it. He did listen enough to know that none of it ever taught him how to deal with _being_ a girl, because apparently things like monthly bleedings didn’t warrant more than a passing mention.

He knew about them, he just now wished that he knew how to get rid of them too.

… he was going to have boobs, wasn’t he?

He stared with some sort of mild horror down at his chest, then sat down hugged his knees close. He didn’t _care_ about the puddle of blood that had accumulated anymore, he needed a bit of time to come to terms with the fact that he was going to _jiggle_. Eventually.

It wasn’t that he hated it, he appreciated all those ladies and he didn’t want to hate his own body, it’s just… he closed his eyes, rested his forehead on his knees, and breathed.

There was a knock on his door.

“You there?”

It wouldn't have been hard to reply, but Sanji didn’t feel like it.

The door got kicked down. He eyed it in alarm, almost scooting away, and saw Zeff towering in the doorway clutching a bag with a gleam of something – dangerous? – in his eyes before their gazes met, and Zeff stomped towards him.

“Could’ve made a sound no,” he grumbled. It lacked an edge though, and sometimes Sanji was still caught off guard by how – _not_ harsh Zeff was. Even when he was drop-kicking Sanji off the deck. So he uncurled a little and sat straighter.

“I would have,” he told Zeff.

“Yeah, yeah.” Zeff looked at the blood and his eyes flicked towards Sanji’s bed. Sanji flushed, but Zeff didn’t comment, simply sitting heavily down next to Sanji and plopping the bag down in front of them. “There’s the padding, kid.” He wasn’t looking at Sanji, but Sanji was still inexplicably embarrassed as he dragged the bag over. “There’s also, uh.” He still wasn’t looking at Sanji, who was mildly alarmed about his hesitance. “A binder.”

A binder?

“For, uh.” Zeff made a wavy motion with his hand, chanced a glance at him that he had caught, then took a deep breath. Motioned in front of his chest. Then sighed gustily. “I’m too old for this.”

Sanji got it though.

He flushed even harder, but beneath that it just felt warm.

He tried speaking, but it was a bit hard to vocalise anything at the moment. After a while, Zeff seemed to have finally come back to himself, and he made another aborted gesture at the bag. “I’ll just, leave you to figure it out. Kid?”

Sanji barely managed the nod.

Zeff got up much more nimbly than a one-legged man ought to be capable of, and he had paused for one second just standing there, looking at Sanji on the floor. “Clean this up… take care of yourself.”

Then he was stomping towards the door. Sanji looked down at his bag.

“Thank you, old man.”

There was a pause in Zeff’s movements, a tiny, minute one before the other harrumphed and went on his way.

Sanji couldn’t help smiling.

**Author's Note:**

> so i've always wanted to read an always-a-girl! sanji fic but there's so few similar to what i'm looking for i guess my brain wanted it enough to make me write it. it helped that there's not enough zeff-and-sanji fics around (there'll never be).  
> hope it's soft and fluffy enough :)


End file.
